Weston and Wyatt strive for more after skeleton start

Skeleton 10 Feb 22

Matt Weston and Marcus Wyatt admitted there is work to do after the first two runs if they are to enhance Team GB's golden skeleton legacy.

Team GB have won medals at all seven Games at which skeleton has featured, including all five since it was reintroduced to the programme in 2002.

But only one of them has been in the men's discipline, Dom Parsons' bronze in PyeongChang, and if there is to be another at Yanqing National Sliding Centre then Weston, 13th, and Wyatt, 17th, will need to shave seconds off their times.

Weston became the first Brit to strike gold on the top-level circuit since 2008 when he tied for World Cup glory with world champion Christopher Grotheer in Igls in November, but here the German is 2.16 seconds ahead in the gold medal place.

ā€œI could probably look at it and look at about ten or 12 mistakes that I made and Iā€™m really not happy," said Weston.

"But at the same time you've got to enjoy it. I'm really happy to be at the Olympics competing and representing my country.

"I'm not happy, I'm hopefully going to go away tonight, look at the video review and come back even stronger tomorrow."

Albeit keen to improve, Weston admits the Chinese track is an unforgiving beast.

"This track is extremely punishing. Normally if you make a mistake on a track you might lose a couple of hundredths, maybe a tenth of a second.

"It's just a very, very fine margin for error."

Four spots and 0.79 seconds further back is Wyatt, who arrived at his first Games full of confidence having won silver at the Beijing test event at the end of last year.

"We were last here in October. The general way tracks are maintained, putting the water onto the ice shape, it just changes over time.

"Some of the corners are behaving a bit differently but we've had ten training runs to try and get to grips with that so it's not a big issue come race day.

"I'm not going to lie and say I'm exactly where I wanted to be. We will go away this evening look at the data, analyse the video and hopefully we can bounce back and pick up a few spots tomorrow."

Despite feeling like he has plenty more to give, Wyatt revealed it is yet to sink in that he has realised his boyhood goal of becoming an Olympian.

He said: "That's really special. We've been here for a week and a half maybe two weeks and that hasn't quite sunk in, I think it will take some time.

"But it is literally a childhood dream and it's something I can be proud of forever."

The duo return tomorrow for runs three and four with the women's competition also getting underway on Friday where 2018 bronze medallist Laura Deas and Brogan Crowley will slide for Team GB.